Jerry Bellune's Blog

Our mission is to coach creative risk-takers to succeed in business and in life.
Our highly-skilled team will coach you to increase sales and revenues as well as cut costs without cutting your throat with strategies that pay off at the bottom line.
Beat your competition, focus your mission and your people to reduce costs using our proven strategies.
All materials are available on my website at http://www.JerryBellune.biz

About Me

Jerry Bellune and his partner MacLeod Bellune. Jerry is an author, business coach, professional speaker, newspaper owner and editor ... Jerry has been involved in every aspect of the newspaper industry, from small weeklies to large dailies. Jerry and his wife MacLeod operate their own book and newspaper publishing company.

Thinking like a beginner offers advantages.
Jack Nicklaus started each season as a beginner.
His golf coach went through an annual ritual.
He checked Jack’s stance and grip.
He checked Jack’s approach to the ball.
He checked his swing and his follow-through.
Want to copy Nicklaus’s success in golf?
Go back to the basics and practice, practice, practice.
The fundamentals help us think creatively.
That leads to innovation and success.

Ray Kroc was big on innovation.
He famously told McDonald’s franchisees:
“We can innovate faster than they can copy us.”
McDonald’s dominated the fast food market.
Kroc also taught his people about growth.
“When you’re green, you’re growing.
“When you’re ripe, you’re rotting.”
Many owners are rotting their way out of business.

Thinking like a beginner has other advantages.
One karate master was buried in a white belt.
The white belt is the belt of the beginner.
Martial artists strive for the coveted black belt.
The master had decades of experience.
He taught his skills to others.
His white belt to him was symbolic of death.
Death, he believed, makes beginners of us all.

Here’s a short exercise to help you in business.
Think about your top three challenges.
They may involved your competition.
Or your sales and client relationships.
Or other bottom line concerns.

Make a list of these challenges.
Detail the steps needed to correct them.
Place a deadline beside each step.
Determine who will help with each step.
Don’t procrastinate. Take action.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

No this isn’t a medical message. It’s more than that.
Gen. Curtis LeMay knew about headaches.
His Strategic Air Command was powerful.
A SAC scramble was an awesome sight to see.
It would send a tingle up your spine.

LeMay was a tough taskmaster.
His pilots were ready to scramble 24 hours a day.
His leadership style was summed up in seven words.
“I don’t get headaches. I give them.”
LeMay was a member of the Warrior Class.
Business owners need to be warriors, too.

A publisher friend called the other day.
He had read something I had written in the trade press.We give our overseas troops a web site password.
This lets them keep up with news back home.
Subscribers pay for their passwords but not our heroes.
It’s a small contribution to helping them keep in touch.

My friend feared some of them might abuse it.
They might give the password to their friends.
Don’t worry about it, I said. If they do, so what?
You may lose a few dollars on subscriptions.
But you have no way to stop it.
Plus your advertisers get extra exposure.
Besides, military families already do plenty for us.
This seems like a small thing to do for them.

He needs to be either a warrior or a worrier.
He wants to be a warrior but he deals with worriers.
This is a test of his leadership.
He must set a warrior example.

Do you have to deal with worriers?
Work on them one at a time.
That way they can’t gang up on you in a group.
Show them your courage by tough decisions.
Encourage them to show their courage, too.
Remind yourself that you sign their pay checks.

Here are three quick questions for you.
1. Who are your warriors?
2. Who are your worriers?
3. How can you get the best from both?

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Last week we talked about failing businesses.
Even more will fail in the next economic slump.

That’s the forecast of native South Carolinian Harry Dent, Jr..
He uses demographics to chart business trends.
He’s accurately forecast previous booms and busts.
He advises us to prepare for the next bust cycle.

Our economy moves in boom and bust cycles.
It expands and contracts . . . with greed and fear.
Some cycles are short in nature, others longer.
Washington has run up $17 trillion in debt.
That’s in only five years and at our risk.
What this means does NOT look good.
Could what’s happened to Greece happen here?
Harry Dent believes it can and will. So do I.

He identifies two groups that will profit in a bust:
1. Young entrepreneurs with ideas and capital.
3. Baby Boomers who have lots of money.
The next bust will deflate prices and slow sales.
Debt-ridden businesses will suffer.
Their money troubles will result in bankruptcy.

Have you been smart about operating lean.
About cutting costs and raising profit margins?
About protecting your cash and cash flow?
Are you focused on recession-proof markets?
This is when you can make the most of it.
As rivals go under, you can increase market share.
You can buy them for pennies on the dollar.
Always buy assets, not their liabilities.

We started our company in 1992.
Some thought we were foolish.
The economy was in a recession.
Established newspapers already served our market.
Our rivals predicted we wouldn’t last six months.
We operated a lean, focused business.
We hired the best people available.
All of us were committed to do whatever it took.
Nine years later, we owned the market.
Our closest rival sold out for pennies on the dollar.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Last week we talked about poor client service.
I want to share this story with you.
It’s about an auto dealer and his sales people.

He bought the business from a retiring owner.
Over the years, the owner’s passion had cooled.
It took three years to position his business for sale.
His accountant helped as best he could.
Those were three hard years of hard decisions.
Nevertheless, he ignored a major problem.

The new owner assessed what he had bought.
Sales had leveled out over the last 10 years.
Net profit showed little year-to-year gain.
Sales were stagnant for two reasons:
1. Lack of marketing and advertising.
2. An unmotivated sales force.

Two sales people, he found, really worked.
They represented 75% of his sales.
They accounted for 85% of his net profit.
The other seven were unproductive.
They wasted time. They complained.
Family problems, they said, distracted them.

He made a tough decision and fired seven.
He recruited two other sales people he knew.
He worked to energize his team of four.
They held weekly sales meetings.
They discussed what worked and what didn’t.
All five of them learned from each other.

He began an aggressive marketing campaign.
He advertised online, in print and cable.
He measured his results from each medium.
He tracked offers which produced the most.
He measured his Return on Investment.
Which offers attracted the most prospects.
Which offers produced the most revenue.
He concentrated on offers than produced revenue.

In a year, his sales increased 6%.
His net profit increased 10%.
The business was making a recovery.